


spoiled birthday cake, spoiled youth

by cereal_whore



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, can zuko see souls? will remain...uNSoLvED, me? fake woke? haha just kidding!....unless?, no beta or revision and you can TELL, this entire thing is a mess and it's like my english essays where i change my theme halfway, this is literally the walmart sales rack version of the other zuko fic i wrote, you cant tell from my edgy writing but i never had a tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 03:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20220979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal_whore/pseuds/cereal_whore
Summary: Zuko doesn't understand why it's selfish to want to be happy (and they trudge on, over the world fertilized by the ashes of their dreams, and watered with the blood of their souls).Or: Zuko probably can see souls, but he can't see the gang as children, when the world burdens them with the responsibilities of a hundred men.





	spoiled birthday cake, spoiled youth

**Author's Note:**

> I was eating a sandwich when i wrote this and the sandwich was s disgustingly subpar i felt sadder than zuko makes me.
> 
> \- 
> 
> lots of this fic was HEAVILY HEAVILY HEAVILY inspired from "even as its petals scatter" by novalotypo (IT'S SO GOOD). it's a voltron fic https://archiveofourown.org/works/15650385

They’re all just kids, yet Zuko cannot see them as anything else but adults.

Toph was perhaps the most childlike, mostly because she purposefully embodies it, allows it to project through every automatic cringe in her features, her mocking timbre accompanied with her stuck-out tongue, and her self-confidence that only kids have when they’re aware that their opponents are weaker and she can scare them off with a few stomps on the playground.

There’s simply no aspect about her that appears adultish, but there’s an undeniable sense of maturity cushioning her temper, directing the feel of her rocks.

Toph bleeds from the bottom of her feet, the blood sunbathing on the pebbles that unlodge from her callouses, leaving strokes of a dying supply of paint against the dusty ground and sharp stones.

Like a child, running around without shoes outside, ignoring their parents’ warnings of the thorned underbrush and offending ground.

However, to Zuko’s unintentionally condescending surprise, Toph’s hand is always outstretched to him with forgiveness (something his sister called naive), with her ability and self-reassurance in being able to crush his knuckles in her grip if necessary. 

She’s adult-like in the sense that she knows her personal limits, as well as others’. 

Toph’s empathy, bubbling underneath a molten layer of challenging smiles and a sharp superiority complex, blooms maturity from its center, through the capability to understand and to forgive, without forgetting. 

But being nice is for children. Azula, who wore childness on her sleeve through wicked jokes and sneers, was an adult in every other way, sitting not as a princess but as a queen on her throne with its skeletal frame, her body and flaws peeking through a ribcage that encloses with no future to open. To open would be suicide, as to open would be to crumble everything inside: the brittle ribs snap apart, crumbling with everything within until she has no more aspects of a child- no more flaws.

Zuko stares at Toph, whose eyes that have never seen, peer past his sneer baring rows of teeth stained with isolation and spite, and into the faltering pace of his smoked-out heart.

Azula cannot do that. Will not do that. (Cannot do that?)

_ So who’s the child? _

And Zuko, reeling through his film of childhood lessons and scarring souvenirs humming like a generator in his empty mind, decides that he cannot stare at Toph any longer, or else everything he was raised on will unravel the knot of personal identity and doubt woven tightly between his ribs, the only thing supporting his sternum and jaw.

_ But what’s so wrong with being children? _

And that question is what scorches his throat with a line of fire, the trail marking the path of the lump of hot tears choking his airway and peppering his eyes with doubt and resentment.

_ Be something. When will you be something? _

And he stares at Toph, whose entire journey was mapped on Earth herself with bloodied footprints, unseen by everyone and especially by her milky eyes that’s shuttered to the idea that she’s so exposed, so raw to the entire world, believing her mask of insouciance and snark is enough to keep everyone else at a radius. 

_ When will you grow up? When will you actually be something? _

He treats Toph like a child, because even though her capability of fathoming his relatively abhorrent presence radiates maturity- something harshly hammered out of her experiences and turmoil for such a rare outcome, yet her misguided faith in whatever she sees in him is childish and foolish (developed through dreams and waves within her inky abyss cut with colour she’s submerged in day and night, through whatever reality she illustrated behind her permanent eyelids).

But he sees her as an adult, because she can’t afford to be anything else, as long as she’s willing to continue as an artist not only in her own world flickering in yellowed scenes and played out through puppets and whimsy within her deconstructible vision, but also outside in their shared world, where she splashes unseen scarlet against the rocks and carpet of Mother Nature.

She oozes sympathy not through tears, her vision too hardened and glassy to trap whatever foggy daydreams cloud her irises to emit anything out unless cracked, but through her feet, that’s sensitive to every single soundwave rattling within their ecosystem’s lungs. 

He treats and interacts with Toph like an adult, knowing it’s not his fault that she’s the one exposing herself to him, that when he snips their connection, or perhaps watches Azula dash her skull in or even just watch her lungs collapse from a simple allergic reaction, that she took this journey and every single outcome, including the fatal ones, are due to her own decisions that she made based on her own, adult choices.

And yet, he sees Toph and doubt threatens to pull at the lace of childhood lessons entwined and rooted in his dying heart, because she’s being something- being a savior of her and others' nations. The consequence of that appears on her gaunt countenance and drained youth,  _ and isn’t that just unfair? _

Zuko’s life consists of fractured bones, loneliness and intense heat, heat of fire, heat of resentment and heat of long-ago tears, and he drinks the heat of his father’s tea that’s curdled from hate, allowing memories to wash his taste buds with insecurity (and it tastes like spoiled birthday cake).

Toph has unknowingly secured his father’s lesson: to be something, to be someone important. Yet, he sees Toph drag along limp, her legs pale and feet more so from blood drainage, and though he knows better, questions his father’s lesson. Because why can’t she just be happy? Why does someone have to do something, be something to be happy?  _ Because it’s selfish _ . 

It’s selfish for one not to help others, no matter the population of suffering and need, even when the moment it starts taking a toll initiates.

With vague concern, he watches with unintentionally muted pity that’ll never show because if Toph knew, then she would deck his face using a wooden plank, with the words ‘fuck you’ engraved in braille to imprint his cheek . 

* * *

Aang radiates life and laughter, stars developing along his waterline and shedding to the ground floor in the form of orange and yellow, glittering even where the spot Zuko stands.

But Zuko is greedy.

Zuko snatches up the stars off the floor, cradling them in his caramel-burnt pads of his fingers, stuffing his pockets full of the pulsing emotion and licking the residue affection of their ingredients off his palm. Because Zuko, like a parasite, feeds off of easy emotions, ranging from everything negative to worse. Aang’s sympathy, horrifying and disdainful pity, are like dangling constellations, and Zuko is more than willing to consider it on the spectrum of disgust, qualifying his tastes as yellow-bellied scum.

But Aang cries affection, his strangely attentive gaze disrupting his typical destructive attention-spanned activities procuring something similar to a fallen star: heat and something once beautiful and calm combusting within seconds, and Zuko gets to witness it in Aang’s eyes before the soup of constellations and galaxies stir from Zuko’s arms, elbow-deep in the concoction to siphon it out.

Zuko can remember his father’s promises, crushed red-flowers on his lips that stain his eye and clog his tear-ducts with withered petals and cobwebs of burnt flesh and goose glue, telling him  _ he could come home if he found the Avatar. _

The Avatar was just a kid.

Some stupid kid with an equally stupid tumor of a dog. 

That could fly. An equally stupid tumor of a dog that could fly.

The kid who had the destiny of populations and cultures riding on his flexible spine that can easily adjust to accommodate every new soul that needed saving, that needed the hand of a young kid whose youthful innocence that spills out his mouth in rushed vocabulary and unintelligent phrases to tape back their pathetic souls.

Zuko is one of those souls. One of the same souls leeching off of the unprejudiced love almost purposefully streaking down Aang’s ashen cheeks.

And Zuko looks at Aang, whose reality, whose knowledge appears to transcend whatever world God has enclosed him in, appears almost as if he knows too much and knows so much more with galaxies in his eyes and spirits flickering through him in phrases and pleas, that it scares Zuko to an unholy degree of how Aang has to be an adult. Aang, his soul and head above the clouds and universe, flashing through multiple worlds at once where laws contort and ideas differ and Aang can pick and select his favourites like this is some game, and yet still grounded to come back and apply the chosen onto their his reality down here.

Zuko treats him like an adult even if he says things such as ‘Sifu Hotman’ or ‘Over-Glorified Flamethrower’, clearly making up words like the kid he is,because what even is a ‘Flamethrower’?

Aang is special in the sense that blood does not leak from his lacerations, and sadness does not drain out of his body but instead bottle up within this vessel whose purpose is for others to use, and instead, the hurt inflicted on his body only draw out love in consequence, in scribbled stars and as a layer of sheen glossing his eyes.

_ Why can’t we just be happy? _

_ When will you be something? _ And Aang already is something- it was predestined, nonconsensual. He is the Avatar, whose decisions directly influence the outcome of humanity.

And sometimes, Zuko sees Aang, redirecting his anger and misgivings in advice, in rational statements that sometimes quiver with rage shown only after, before attempting to patch up the problem with his stars that he peels the backings off of like they’re stickers. 

And sometimes, Zuko wonders why is it fair. Perhaps it’s fair because it was by assumed chance that Aang is the Avatar.

But most of the times, Zuko wonders why does it matter if he was the Avatar. Does he not have the human right to be selfish? Or is Aang above that, above that (because he isn’t conformed to just this realm of mortals, right).

How come Aang cannot bleed red, but instead has to stare directly at his problems with a quivering lip and comforting gaze? Why does he have to ignore his anxiety flickering as an undertone due to inexperience (because he’s just a  _ child _ and why must he be responsible for others’ happiness?), and crank out another cookie-cutter star spliced through his heart to hand over to the ungrateful issue?

(And Zuko knows he’ll always accept the star cupped in Aang’s outstretched hands, pretending as though he can’t see the swirl of yellow and red dripping between the boy’s fingers and looping in strands from Aang’s to his accepting hand, staining Zuko’s fingers equally orange.)

Stars have fallen for lesser men, but Zuko is not kind. He snatches the stars and ignores the bright, Mother-Nature warning neon orange that highlight his skin and Aang’s.

Aang bleeds because he is the Avatar; Aang will always be the Avatar first, and human second.

* * *

Katara is uncontrollable. 

The blood splattering across the floor, spurting through the air isn’t hers. It’s always others.

He sees it in the way that he wakes up from a night of Katara’s glares cutting through the dark and into his skin, the blood leaking and soaking through hi blankets.

He sees it in the way that Aang continues to produce stars, stars that are drying up his lake of time, his lake of worth (but he’ll never truly run out- there’ll always be more for everyone else but himself). He dries out, to supply Katara with glowing bandages and shaky smiles. 

He sees it in the way that when Toph storms away from an argument, the rocks burrow deeper into her angrier, heavier clomps, the way that her eyes are encased in resin of defense from experience and self-reliance still quivering behind their plexiglass shield.

He sees it in the way that Sokka, surprisingly still and cold, sometimes sits down and lets himself bleed, letting his sisters’ words and pressure and fear scar his skin, blowing chunks of flesh out of his cheek with an especially harsh sentence.

Zuko almost thought she was exactly like Azula at first.

Azula never bleeds.

Their father’s hands and words might imprint bruises amongst her spine, his knuckles cracked across her cheekbones in the evidence of watercolours of water and wine, but nothing ever exits her body except for sick words and wheezy laughs. 

Azula only ever absorbs- ever takes, because she learned quickly from the beginning to take whatever she can get. 

He can almost see the resemblance between him and her personalities, despite how different they are and how much Azula would spit and rage if she heard any inkling that he thought they shared anything (if it’d console her, he’s startled too. Disappointed just like her). Being greedy and taking without consideration of others must run in their bloodline.

If they even bleed.

And Katara almost appeared kin to that.

That is, until he realized that whatever was slicking his calves, crusting between his toes and rooting the soles of his soft shoes to the ground was excreted from none other than Katara.

At first, the obviousness of its existence portrayed through the clouding air and scarily unpredictable atmosphere were simply nothing more than smoke fire signals to what squid-moss substance coats the grass, suffocating the blades underneath its thick, molasses substance.

It’s Katara.

She doesn’t bleed. 

It’s fascinatingly mortifying, like watching a chariot’s own rye-horse’s three legs buckle and collapse on itself, allowing its flaming mane to consume its body for fat, and the chariot with everyone else inside it for fuel.

Katara does not bleed. 

Rather, the oil greasing her old gears, her defense mechanisms and instinctive responses to any signal of danger is leaking out of her malfunctioning system, her entire structure collapsing from rust and wear, fatigue tearing at the shingles of her haunted house constructed from fractioned bones and blackened organs.

Her degrading body, consumed with misery and responsibilities of a hundred men and not a single child, is folding like a newborn jackdeer on its fragile legs and trembling frame shelling a too-quick heart, is spurting oil, tar and frustration in all directions, staining his clothes with its component of anger sizzling like acid against his exposed flesh.

Sprayed through her words and spittle, is every single problem, every single solution either clotting her nerves and the gears of her mechanism or slicking her reaction time and awareness in preparation, is spilling out and no amount of brohem bolts or rabbit-tape will fix her.

Really.

How bad does it get, to stop bleeding red, and instead, be so hollow of a human that all they have left in their empty bodies are what keeps them alive for the next day?

So malfunctional, that her burdens prove themselves to her friends in the form of frosty words, heated glowers and haunted expressions.

Katara is nothing like Azula.

Azula’s slit flesh simply crystalize over with apathy and indifference since her very first stinging cut.

Katara simply has nothing left to give. She’s not like Toph, whose injuries go unaware because she only allows a single Achilles heel to exist on her body molded from molten steel and hard, unforgiving hands of Mother Nature, but instead, she’s decayed to the point where her injuries are known and nothing can be done to heal them. Born without natural defenses like Azula, or learned ones like Toph, Zuko believes there’s nothing Katara can do anymore: it’s too late.

And so he supposes the kindest thing he could do is allow his clothes to permanently dye black, let his skin sting from searing motorair oil and slippery tar that’s destined to harden into permanent elevated pools of black against his pale visage, because Katara’s insides are already irreversibly coated, permanently damaged by them.

Katara gave everything she had, and now there’s nothing left for herself.

And Zuko still does not understand. Why did that have to happen? Why do people have to become something, why must they designate their life to actively help others, to be there for others? What’s wrong with not wanting to save others, with not wanting to give a piece of themselves for other people- no matter how much they beg? Why is that selfish?

What’s wrong with wanting to be happy, even with the awareness of how that might affect others?

* * *

Sokka surprises Zuko the most.

For a guy whose tongue is a sentient threat to humanity on its own, he’s startling quiet. It was almost suspicious at first. 

Zuko’s lived with Azula forever- he can detect liars within a second, because if he wasn’t able to, Azula would personally seek him out and beat him with a bamboo rod because she’d somehow connect that to insulting her legacy of lies.

(Really, a bitch move.)

So maybe Sokka doesn’t bleed blood either. He and Katara are from the same blood, are they not? For all his griping, his complaints about how his tanning is uneven so he looks like all his limbs were marinated in soy sauce, whenever an actual problem his arises, his lips are always pressed tightly into a fine line, about to sink into his face as if he never had a mouth in the first place, as if that cavity was filled with wet cement and hardened by experience.

Everyone else, crawling along the floor with wain countenances and tired movements, slowly collects the shattered shards of their motivation to glue it together back with their own tar, own blood, with their own hollow dreams and happiness to reconstruct themselves because they can’t afford to be children anymore; and sometimes, others just aren’t enough, so they use whatever’s left of them to glue themselves back together with maple glue and ivory sap.

It’s almost curious to watch.

Because even if they shun others away, Sokka still insists to be there. Clutching his sisters’ tremoring hands whose fingers are playing a broken rhythm on an untuned piano’s rainbison’s ivory keys, with a solemn expression while uttering sacrilegious words of comfort, leaving them up in the air for judgement on their credibility and whether they’re meaningful.

Sokka almost appears to be a father.

The way that he even crouches by Toph, who doesn’t need nor want others, understanding to not suffocate her with false promises and hugs, he suddenly becomes an older brother, something that Zuko never was. 

It’s almost strange. Toph christens him a brother as well, yet, those twos’ dynamic are on a completely different spiritual realm than his understanding of a sibling relationship.

But Sokka is a constant. A force and pillar that doesn’t break when the foundation below him is caving on itself.

However, Zuko knows better than that. He might’ve not, if he didn’t witness Sokka stitch himself up like he consisted of leathery patches of thinned unilus skin. Zuko saw in the middle of the night, when everyone else including him should’ve been asleep, through the soft glow of the campfire, Sokka’s holy ritual of running the hooked needle through his skin and pulling tight- allowing the fishing wire to close the crevices of his skin taunt, until whatever’s beneath can’t be seen.

But through the dimmed surroundings, Zuko can see the trickle of black seeping out of the seams, blotting his clothes like old blood.

The stench that causes Zuko to nearly black out from a flashback conjured from the familiarness (he knows the smell of loneliness and isolation quite well- it’s a friend) practically sings through the air, hissing from the darkness seeping out of Sokka.

There’s a materialistic smell as well.

Motor oil.

Just like his sister. He knew it. Except Katara relies on motor oil, on fuel from a third party consisting of desperation and stress to produce this by-product rather than personal want or happiness or even  _ willingness _ , while Sokka clearly drives on it directly. 

Sokka, the unofficial engineer and startling amazing strategist, of course would have had a plan and foresight to the collapse of his internal organs and emotional motor, has already a stash of oil stored in the bottom of his gut. 

He already built iron skin grafts, engineered a functional mask for his blank visage, blueprinted a strong bones that wouldn’t crumple into fine dust under pressure. 

And every night, he has to touch it up, refine his stirring systems, prevent it from rusting, prevent whatever’s inside from being seen.

Sokka, playful like a child, clinging onto his younger sister (it’s strange, isn’t it?), sympathy oozing out his eyes, shaping patronizing pity, and with his loud, comically prideful character puppeteering the mood of the group.

And Zuko never felt so bad as he did that night, because isn’t that sad?

Zuko, with his hazy eyes literally and mentally destroyed from childhood, knows there’s nothing to cry out of him anymore the way that Sokka cannot. And so Sokka allows Katara’s words to damage his armour, confronts Aang’s tantrums that are never  _ just _ about the current problem but include something that laid eggs in the cavity it eaten away in his brain, and Toph’s brutal rejection and self-destruction to throw rocks and words at his body alike.

And then at night, after everything’s done and everyone else have shut down, his system glows alight out of his empty eyes to reshape his mask, to sodder back together his parts.

Zuko knows that calmness, apathy,  _ maturity, _ whatever words work in abnormal harmony with the definition of that word, are never just what they are. They’re simply in place to latch over whatever those words really mean underneath all the projected sureness and detached sympathy or indifference, because whatever’s underneath can never be seen.

* * *

Zuko cannot see souls- it doesn’t take a special power to see wasted youth written upon these childrens’ faces.


End file.
